THE GLASSBLOWER OF MURANO

First novel melds the stories of a 17th-century master craftsman and his modern-day descendant.

Born in Venice, the product of her mother’s short-lived marriage to vaporetto boatman Bruno Manin, Leonora was raised in England. Now in her mid-30s, Leonora has returned to Venice, fleeing her broken marriage, destroyed by too many futile courses of IVF and by her husband’s infidelity. Leonora uses her divorce settlement to launch two long-deferred quests: to learn more about her late-Renaissance forbear, renowned glassblower Corradino Manin, and to become a Venetian glass maestra herself. First stop: the Isle of Murano, still Venice’s main hub of artisanal glass. In Corradino’s day, craftsmen were sequestered on Murano to prevent them from communicating the secrets on which Venice’s glass monopoly depended. Leonora lands an apprenticeship in the fornace (glass atelier) of Adelino. But Roberto, descended from another fabled Murano glass man, Giacomo del Piero, uses her male colleagues’ gender bias against her. Sexy policeman Alessandro insinuates himself into Leonora’s bed, then goes intermittently AWOL. Desperate to increase sales, Adelino hires a PR crew to capitalize on the Manin cachet, using photogenic Leonora (repeatedly described as a Botticelli-blonde beauty) as a spokeswoman. The campaign backfires when Alessandro’s ex-girlfriend, a tabloid reporter, interviews Roberto, who claims that Corradino sold Venice’s glass formula to France, betraying his teacher and protector, Giacomo del Piero. Now happily pregnant but unemployed, Leonora must rehabilitate the Manin name by proving Corradino wasn’t a traitor. Corradino’s story alternates with Leonora’s. Sole survivor of a noble family massacred by the Doge’s enforcers, The Ten, Corradino, oppressed by constant surveillance, steals away to France to create Louis XIV’s hall of mirrors at Versailles. But can he save his mentor, del Piero, and his secret daughter, Leonora, if The Ten tracks him down?

Despite some awkward POV shifts, the action proceeds briskly, with just enough technical and period detail to sustain interest.